APS Fall boundary questionnaire

[Anonymous]

Looks like APS is redrawing boundaries again this fall for Drew and Abingdon. Why didn’t they get it right the first time? Will the SB move Fairlington?!

[Anonymous]

Who knows. They had two chances to do it already and punted both times.

[Anonymous]

They punted bc of COVID.

[Anonymous]

Fear not - Mary is going to fix all that. Experience when it counts.

[Anonymous]

Which middle and high schools are being reviewed? The attachments were data tables with little info on overall capacities.

[Anonymous]

Like all APS surveys, I made a good faith attempt to fill it out, but became confused as to what they wanted from me. I abandoned ship.

APS needs to fire their survey design team. All of them are completely biased towards their own goals.

[Anonymous]

As I understand it, they were hoping to avoid a boundary change through a voluntary transfer program, but not enough families opted to transfer to Drew. I don’t know anything else about the process, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As I understand it, they were hoping to avoid a boundary change through a voluntary transfer program, but not enough families opted to transfer to Drew. I don’t know anything else about the process, though.

Yup - that’s what I’ve come to understand too. Such a farce - Fairlington already let their racist flags fly last time - no way there were going to be enough voluntary transfers to Drew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As I understand it, they were hoping to avoid a boundary change through a voluntary transfer program, but not enough families opted to transfer to Drew. I don’t know anything else about the process, though.

Yup - that’s what I’ve come to understand too. Such a farce - Fairlington already let their racist flags fly last time - no way there were going to be enough voluntary transfers to Drew.

Unless you send your kids to one of the 60+% FRM schools, you don't really have any room to talk trash.

[Anonymous]

Can someone summarize what is proposed for middle/HS please?

I am in north central Arlington with early elementary schooler.

[Anonymous]

The bigger issue is the MS/HS. APS has been notorious for not taking into account housing that is in the process of coming online. They don't connect with the county well on what's 2-5yrs downstream.

We are a McKinley family, so I can only give an example from here, although I'm sure there are plenty of others county-wide. When the Fisher House affordable housing was being renovated APS was refusing to plan for space for kids that they knew would be moving in 2yrs later. They used only data based on children currently in the planning units, even as they knew a certain number of family-sized apartments were being built.

APS is asking us to do the hard work for them. If you know there is a site that a developer is in the process of purchasing and it isn't on their spreadsheet, give them that data. The Febrey Lothrop property is another good example. Within 5yrs there could be dozens of SFH homes on that lot. It needs to be in the back of their heads that those children will need to go to school somewhere, likely Ashlawn or Cardinal.

Look around your community and if you think they've missed something, get it in front of them.

[Anonymous]

Mary and the real house wives of Madison Manor will have the answers! Team save McKinley will come to the rescue.

[Anonymous]

Why can't I scroll through the planning unit data table? I'm sure it's user error but anyone else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can't I scroll through the planning unit data table? I'm sure it's user error but anyone else?

Probably frozen rows on top. Either hide them or go to View and unfreeze them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who knows. They had two chances to do it already and punted both times.

Teh 2nd time they punted because of Covid.

The first time they just...threw up their hands.

I don't know how they think they will be able to only re-draw these 2 schools. It was clear from the last go round (re-doing boundaries when Fleet opened, and Drew dropped Montessori) that the ENTRIE COUNTY needed to be adjusted to make any sort of meaningful shifts.

If they move S. Fairlington, they raise the FRL rate at Abingdon significantly. It wasn't an easy solution to do that. They need to shift things NORTH to balance all the housing on Columbia Pike. There are several very big AH complexes on the Pike that go to Abingdon, and there is no other school nearby that can absorb them. Randolph, no. Barcroft, no, Carlin Springs, no.

It's very hard to rebalance without involving more zones. They made bad choice moving Key to ATS. Mainly because Claremont's Immersion should probably be moved to Carlin Springs and make that a neighborhood school. But they can't have both Immersion schools in the same part of the county.